That fall, my husband Gregg came home one night and appeared to have stroke-like symptoms with numbness in his hands and slurred speech.  We rushed to the Emergency room and after several hours, we received the devastating news that he had several brain tumors.  Within the week he had surgery at the James, OSU to remove a golf ball size tumor.  The week of Thanksgiving we brought him home and were also hit with the news that the cancer was metastasized Melanoma.  My oldest was a senior and youngest a junior in high school.  The same week we had to testify to the grand jury as the home invasion case was progressing and my husband, weak and battling cancer, navigated that process with our daughters.  We agreed to a 4-year stipulated sentence for the home invasion. Gregg battled cancer with radiation and chemo treatments for 9 months and was able to see our oldest graduate high school.  However, we received the shock of our lives when he passed at the age of 49 on August 12, 2019.  The following week on Saturday we had his funeral, Wednesday my youngest started her senior year, and on Friday I moved my oldest to college.  Then I broke down, and it’s been a long road to get back to where I am today.   Losing a spouse changes everything about you and part of me died with him.  Grief isn’t even a strong enough word.  I think of it as life before and after. Until you’ve lost a spouse you truly can’t comprehend the heart aching sadness that you carry at moments in the present and for the future with his absence.   We had been married for 21 years. Gregg was who I talked to about everything and was the biggest cheerleader of my life!  I wouldn’t be the person I am today without him.  I dealt with guilt and just sheer loneliness.  I had trouble finding joy in anything I did. Even though my daughters are my best friends too, I lost my partner, their father and our family anchor.  I always had a vision of our family, our daughter’s future, and now I felt this tremendous responsibility in that it was just me, and I couldn’t talk to the only other person in the world who loves them like I do. It’s true that the death of a spouse or parent is a break in your family chain that will never be repaired.  I also know everyone experiences loss on so many different scales although there is still no way around it when it’s your loss, it’s uniquely personal. Life does go on, however it’s different.  A few months after Gregg’s passing I had a scare with a lump on my thyroid so I flew down to the Tampa Thyroid Center where I had half my thyroid removed.   Upon returning home, the world shut down due to Covid and the Pandemic.  While to some the Pandemic was the worst experience of their life, and my heart goes out to all those who lost loved ones during this time, for us it was a time for healing.  Both my girls came home and it gave us time together. I have never lived alone and as my youngest went off to the Ohio State University, I was terrified. Although I only have one brother, I have a large extended family of over 50 cousins on both sides with some more like sisters. I probably couldn’t have gotten through that time without them or a dear friend I’ve known since kindergarten.  I looked into hosting exchange students and was preparing for two, one from Spain and one from Italy, until Covid canceled that year.  Then I thought maybe I’m meant to be a foster parent so I went through a month of foster parent training.  These activities kept me busy and I think also provided the distraction through time to work through some of the loss.   I came across a poem by Donna Ashworth that I remind myself when I need it, “When you have lost someone you love…do not make the mistake of living in sadness, or living small to honor their absence.  You owe it to them to live even more vividly than before. Love is an energy, so powerful, so all-consuming that when the person you felt all that love for is not here, you are a vessel filled with a boundless source of power that has nowhere to go. Harness it. Use it to burn even more brightly and live even more loudly than before.  If they could reach you they would surely say…Make my time on earth count loudly, so I've not lived in vain. Use the love we shared to make more love and not more pain.” I don’t know when the exact moment was that I can say I found a way through the sadness, but life does go on.  It’s not the same life, and I can look back at pictures and often think I don’t even remember that life or the person I was in those pictures.  Sometimes I like to wonder what Gregg would think of me now and it brings a smile and tears because even though I’ve found a way through, the pain will always be there, now more for the loss of the future, especially with our daughters.